In Return Backwards Orlik presents us with a room of confusing images. The room’s ceiling has an oval shaped cavity which is open to the purple night sky above. A clock with four pendulums hangs on the wall, its hands point to five minutes to midnight; a coffin or sarcophagus stands in the centre of the room on a lowered rectangular section, like a sunken bath; the lid of the coffin is slightly open, like it’s been left ajar, and it is black inside. A strange, penetrating black hole in the wall of the room shaped like a pyramid made from children’s building blocks, demands attention; it gapes open, a chthonic aperture perhaps. The narrow room ends in a curved wall, like the apse of a church, made up of a window of stained glass of clear and coloured triangles and squares; the shapes delicately reflect on the floor in front and on the wall to the side. A strange hook, shaped like distorted handlebars, hangs on the wall; it creates a spider-like shadow. The wall to the right appears to have a doorway in which sits, maybe, a figure; a rounded, ball-like shape protrudes from the doorway covered by a blue cloth with frothy white edges, emerging from the doorway like a flood of water; above a head of hair leans out of the doorway; above this and the think black strip of the doorway sits what appears to be a bird of prey, like an eagle or vulture, which has the wings of a bird or an angel.

The insinuations that this room represents a sacred space gives rise to the idea that the blue figure is Mary and the bird is the angel Gabriel and we are, therefore, witnessing the Annunciation scene which incorporates Christ’s death and resurrection (the open tomb) at the same time. Time Backwards could, therefore, be relating the death and resurrection to the Annunciation and subsequently suggesting the whole circle of the birth of Christ, to his death and re-birth and so on; if time, as the title suggests, is going backwards then the circle is reversed but this then, wittily but also philosophically, becomes a chicken and egg scenario. It also becomes about our and everyone’s and everything’s own cycle of life.